Fuck you Prince! And you too Madonna!! But, mostly Boy George.

So, I grew up in the 80's. And, lots of fashion mistakes were made back then, but that's the era that formed my sense of what constituted fashion staples. Right? In the 80's I learned that you can wear anything as long as you have on black pants. (I also learned that it was okay to wear a jheri curl with bangs and lines cut into the side of my head. I think my parents would have been ashamed to be seen with me if it weren't for the pegged acid-washed jeans I lived in. You know the drill: fold and roll.)

So, there I was minding my own business, learning how to pick out my own clothes, just coming off of the wave of, "just get a big ass belt and put it over your t-shit" during elementary school .

And, I could tell that I was done with that. But, as I started to develop a more mature sense of fashion, I had no idea that I was doing so in the middle of an androgysexy fashion movement.

You sexy muthafuckuhaaa!!!

So, today as a professional lesbian (lesbian professional?) I get incredibly frustrated looking for clothes that I like, whereas when I was younger I had no problem finding clothes that I loved, whether I shopped in the men's or women's section. I enjoyed wearing nice clothes, and was voted "Best Dressed" for a couple of years in school, so I had some sense of what I was doing. But today, I get really frustrated in the women's section looking for clothes that I like, and the men's clothes aren't cut to accentuate my sexy eyebrows, so I'm in a bit of a quandary.

I've always liked Diane Keaton's sense of fashion. (Just a non-sequitur.)

So, I've been looking for dress shoes for about 2 years now. I have a pair that I wear, but it's not exactly what I want.

And after my last trip to the mall, opening up a full day of fruitless shoe shopping, it finally hit me. Men's fashion is distinct from women's fashion today in a way that it wasn't when I was growing up. So, when I had an easy time finding androgyclothes in 1989 and thought that the middle-ground of fashion was just where I would wallow for the rest of my days, I had no idea that this space was ephemeral and a mere 10 years later I would be left in the chasm created by the rigid separation of dichotomous gender binaries.

I'm a big fan of deconstructionist postmodernism for a variety of reasons, AND I recognize the challenges that are created for gender non-conforming people of any stripe when we become recalcitrant about examining the limitations of rigid gender roles. Patriarchy, blah, blah, blah.

But, if I may be honest for just a moment here: I'm a lesbian with some fairly sexy eyebrows, and our society's inability to think well about the expanse of what "girl" (and I guess "boy" for that matter) gets to include has cost me some damn good looking clothes. And, when I do manage to put together some nice pieces, believe me, I have had to work hard to get them.

I was duped. Bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Run amok. Railroaded? That wasn't fashion reality, it was the 1980's. So, listen to me America, or at least the 3 people who read my blog, please work through your gender shit, because I would like to have my clothing options back.